Says she evenly splits tourney winnings with a silent backer who fronts
entry fees. Earned the 48,000 consulting from ieLogic, a developer of
internet based multiplayer poker software, also received stock options.

Here's a question and answer for next year's WSOP:
Where is next year's WSOP being held? Binion's, The Rio or elsewhere?

In an interview conducted by Debbie Burkhead of "Poker Player" Newspaper,
WSOP Tournament Director Matt Savage stated that the 2005 WSOP will be at
the Rio, with the exception of the final 2 days of the main event which
will be held at Binion's as part of a political deal with the Mayor of the
City of Las Vegas.

Harrahs originally didn't want anything to do with Binion's after WSOP
2004, but had to agree to the 2005 deal with the Mayor of Las Vegas in
order to have permits approved.

The WSOP will stay at the Rio until Harrahs builds the new Horseshoe on
The Strip.

The Rio Pavilion Convention Center has a large ballroom with 55000+ square
feet of space and a seating capacity of 3680 for banquets. The room
should be able to fit 300 poker tables so that the WSOP main event can
accomodate as many as 6000 entrants split into 2 flights.

Per the comments from my last post - FatGuy, you can pre-order Doyle's new book on Amazon. Penguin - hell yes, I have a full-time real job.

I was flipping through Business Week and found an interesting article about Hot Growth Companies - The 100 best small companies that started off talking about Las Vegas based Shuffle-Master. Thankfully I found the article online here.

--
Founded in 1983 by John Breeding, an entrepreneur who figured out how to make a reliable card-shuffling machine that allowed casinos to quickly and securely deal more hands, the company has cashed in big on the explosive growth of new casinos and the resurgent popularity of poker.
--

And allow me to close out this mini-post with a great little story from Jonathan Kaplan on RGP:

Subject: Phil on 6! seat open!

I was sitting in a 15-30 holdem game at the bellagio. it was late on
Friday night, or more accurately, early Saturday morning. I had been
there for many hours. the game was great, populated by a profitable
mix of crazy action players, weak tight regulars, and new-found
rounders, college kids just learning how to play. Some of the players
were drinking. I was sitting in seat 3, my favorite seat (along with
seat 8) due to the ease of viewing every player from this vantage
point. The 1 seat was a Hawaiian/Californian man, somewhere in his
mid-twenties, a conservative/predictable player. The 6 seat was Adam
Krux, a sharp dresser whose father had just that day placed at the
final table in this year's WSOP championship. Adam had been drinking a
bit, chewing some tobacco, and flirting with seat 8. seat 8 was a
short/stocky gum-snapping asian chick. She played very aggressively,
playing many hands and usually raising pre/post-flop as often as she
reasonably (or unreasonably) could. The 7 seat was empty, having just
been vacated by a middle-aged white guy, chip-less when he departed.

A lot of chips had stayed on the table as the day wore on, but plenty
had left in the shirt pockets of dealers, and dealers at table 6 had
called out quite often, "Fill on 6!". After awhile we started joking,
"why always ask for Phil, why not occasionally George or Steve?" okay,
it was a lame joke, but this far into a poker session, it seemed
funny. Most of the players were either winning a lot or losing a lot,
kind of tired, and drinking to boot, humor appears quite often in that
kind of atmosphere.

The dealer calls out, "Fill on 6! Seat Open!". A few moments later, a
youngish guy appears, half drunk beer in hand, the other hand holding
a rack of $5 chips intermixed with some $1 chips, a very disorderly
half-empty rack. He sits down in seat 7. The lady in seat 8 jokingly
asks, "is your name Phil?" the new player looks at her and answers
"Yes". We all get a laugh from that.

The button is in the 8 seat. The dealer begins dealing. When he gets
to Phil, he asks, "would you like to post?". Seat 7 looks drunk and
bewildered. The dealer says, "put up $15 and you will get a hand".
Phil takes three $5 chips and puts in them in front of his rack. He
gets a hand. Utg folds, all fold until the 7 seat. He just sits there,
motionless. The dealer gestures at Phil, gets no response, then says,
"sir, do you check or bet? It is your option." Phil says "check". The
button folds, the blinds call. The flop comes A-Q-6. the blinds check,
the action comes to Phil. The dealer points again, gets no response
again, then says, "sir, your action". Phil turns his hand face up, J8.
some at the table start laughing, others say things like, "no, you
don't turn your hand over until the end". Phil looks very confused. At
my end of the table, I opine that Phil is a blackjack player who
thinks he just won, his 18 beating the dealer's busted hand/flop. The
dealer mucks Phil's hand, he looks confused, the hand finishes shortly
after. A few of us realize that Phil is a table-games player who just
happened to wander into a poker room, he has no clue what he is doing.

The dealer shuffles for the next hand, then distributes the cards.
Phil receives his two cards, then holds them up to view like some
experienced BJ players would, out from his body, so that nearby
players can see them, able to use his cards in their own point count.
The lady in seat 8 is apparently looking directly at Phil's hand. I
and the one seat call attention to this, but no one at the other end
of the table notices this or hears us. All fold to Phil in seat 7. At
the inevitable pause, the dealer says, "15 to you, sir". Phil
carefully pulls three more chips from his rack and places them on the
felt. The lady in seat 8 throws out 6 chips in a raise. Fold, fold,
then the 1 seat says "reraise" and throws out 9 chips. Back to Phil.
The dealer says, "30 to you sir, 6 more chips". Phil looks completely
unknowing, but carefully removes chips from his rack, one at a time,
until there are 9 chips in from of him. Seat 8 reraises, seat 9 thinks
for a moment, then caps it. Apparently, seat 8 knows what Phil has and
is raising to get it headsup, and seat 1 knows this, and is raising
them both. Back to Phil, the dealer says, "30 to call". Phil is
totally lost, but he puts in 6 more chips, one at a time.

The flop comes Q-7-2.

Seat 1 opens the betting. The dealer turns towards Phil. At least this
time, Phil knows to not just flip his hand up with the flop. The
dealer says, "15 to call". I say out loud, "you don't have to call,
you can fold if you wish." (when I used to teach poker at the trading
firm for which I worked, every year we had a company-wide tournament,
and every year we gave poker seminars to the many employees who didn't
play, just so they could play in that tournament. I always taught the
dealers to tell all newbie players what their choice of action was,
don't just automatically give them the amount to call, rather, say
"your choices are, fold, call 15 or raise to 30. so here Phil is, an
obvious newbie, and I feel compelled to do the same for him.) Phil
takes 3 chips from his rack and puts them down in front of his cards.
I groan, others laugh, everyone starts talking. The consensus at my
end of the table is that Phil is getting a real raw deal, has no clue
what he is doing, his short rack is getting fully decimated on this
one hand. Right about then, a floor person walks over. The floor says,
"don't you have a seat open here?". The dealer looks at him
quizzically and says, "no, you sent the player over, he is sitting in
seat 7". The floor looks at Phil and says, "I didn't send this guy
over, he's not on the list". The whole table is now up in arms, all
talking, some commenting on Phil's naivety, others trying to hear the
floor, some trying to explain to Phil that he just can't sit down to
play, he needs to be on the list, still others (like me) yelling at
seat 8 for taking advantage of this poor blackjack player who happened
to wander into the wrong table. Phil sits there in the eye of the
storm, quietly and totally confused. The floor says, "well, he'll
finish out this hand, then he has to leave." The action continues.
Seat 8 raises. Seat 1 reraises. The dealer points at Phil and says,
"30 to you, sir". A few of us say, quite loudly, "you can fold if you
want to". The floor hears this and says, "one player to a hand, the
rest of you keep quiet." This seems like a real travesty in this
specific instance, but the floor has spoken. I sit down, what can one
do? Phil looks at his one remaining tube of chips. The dealer says
again, "30 to you, sir". Phil carefully removes 6 chips and pushes
them forward. Seat 8 raises. Seat 1 caps. A few of us mutter/groan
about the inequity of the situation. The dealer says to Phil, "30 to
call, sir". Phil says, "if I win, I win all those chips in the
middle?". The dealer says "yes". Phil slowly calls.

The floor is standing behind Phil, ready to hustle him out of the seat
at the end of the hand. The 8 seat is glowering at me, presumably for
insulting her and also, for trying to get Phil to bow out while he
still has chips. The dealer turns a card, an innocuous baby card. Seat
1 bets. The dealer points at Phil, "30 to call, sir". Phil, now used
to the drill, apparently resigned to his fate, puts in six chips. Seat
8 just calls. The river is another innocuous card, straights are
possible, no flush, but who knows what anyone actually holds? Seat 1
bets. The dealer faces Phil, "30 to you, sir". Phil looks down at his
rack, he only has about $40 left, but game to the end, he pulls out 6
red chips and pushes them forward. The lady in the 8 seat calls.
The dealer announces, "showdown". Seat 1 turns up AQ, top pair, top
kicker. The dealer turns to Phil. Seat 8 says, "your turn to show
cards." Phil says to her, "you first." She says, "No, it is your
turn". Phil turns up 77. he flopped a set. Most of the table leaps up,
laughing, high-fiving. justice is served. Seat 8 disgustedly throws
her KK into the muck.

Tempers are high, what with all the laughing, wasted bets and strange
doings. The floorperson quickly racks up Phil's huge pot. Phil gets
up, still looking very confused, and the floor hustles him and his
chips over to the cashier. Everyone at the table is discussing the
events in the aftermath. Seat 8 says she didn't see Phil's hand, why
would she call the river if she had? (I still think it would have been
very hard to NOT see Phil's hand, but, I am no longer certain). Seat 1
confirms he was pushing real hard because he saw extra equity in the
way the situation developed, maybe seat 8 was overplaying to get it
down to headsup with Phil, and maybe Phil would fold at anytime. Who
knew?

That hand was talked about for hours afterward. I think Phil thought
he was playing some form of blackjack, but if so, why didn't he split
the sevens?

Jonathan
wherever you go, there you are...

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Link of the Day:
Jack Watches Your BackJack Chick's tract has become inflamed by homosexuals. "I believe the time will soon come when godless judges will close churches that call being gay a sin."